Various

“ He should take popular characters and popular subjects; but an architect! Why, not one in a thousand knows or cares any thing about architects. Trash! and now just do look at this—a weekly paper, called The Builder! and another character to be drawn out—an Enthusiast, who is also an architect! Well, upon my word, that is good! We have heard of castles in the air; I suppose we are going to have a builder of them, and that this Enthusiast is to be the architect. ”

“ The ground we have chosen is unoccupied and untrodden. We have a great task in reversing the usage of centuries. We must, therefore, call upon the workmen themselves to aid us in fighting their own battle,—not a battle against interests or individuals, but against ignorance and exclusion. And we reiterate our call on the friends of the working classes, for whose satisfaction, and the satisfaction of all who care to know it, we now make our profession of purpose as regards the end and object of our labours. ”

“ He will pardon us, if in the honest excess of our gratitude on personal grounds, but much more in our humble capacity as of the “craft” for whom he has so well laboured—a gratitude which took possession of our minds through the reading of his works long before we knew him—he will pardon us, if, unrestrained by a sense of the little pain we may cause him on the one hand, we thus tender to him that which we are assured, will on the other be acceptable—our honest and undisguised, but feeble expression of grateful esteem. ”

“ If a clock is required it is not unusual to cast a Roman warrior in a flying chariot, round one of the wheels of which, on close inspection, the hours may be descried; or the whole of a cathedral church reduced to a few inches in height, with the clock-face occupying the position of a magnificent rose window. Surely the inventor of this patent clock-case could never have reflected that according to the scale on which the edifice was reduced, his clock would be about 200 feet in circumference, and that such a monster of a dial would crush the proportions of any building that could be raised. ”

“ Aye! we will take the rude, unlettered Carpenter of the most obscure country workshop, and match him as an educated man against the most learned pundit of our universities. We do not mean to say that the Carpenter is a better man for his rudeness, or because he may read or write badly, or not at all; but we take this as an illustration of the meaning we attach to the word education in its practical sense, and we will now say a word as to its bearing on the course we have chalked out for ourselves. ”

“ Enthusiast is an architect! Upon my word, some one will exclaim, what is coming to us now-a-days?—architects and architecture are obtruded upon us at every turn; and a certain lady of a certain age (which means, as everybody knows, no very large portion of a century) indignantly expostulates against this attempt to engross the public mind and attention with these “new fanglements” of a profession and an art which her father and grandfather’s days could very well do without. ”

“ We have letters of encomium from architects as well as from builders and working men; and as it is for the latter that we are most anxious, feeling assured that when matters are right at the base of the social structure, the ornaments are firmly fixed and supported, so we feel the greater pride in perceiving the interest which the workman takes in our labours. It is the architect, however, and the experienced and liberal master builder, the clerk of works, and foreman, who can assist us to the enlightening of the body of the craft ”

“ Academies were established as depositories of learning and practice in the fine arts, and the means of their preservation and transmission through the vicissitudes of the times. The enlightened and commercial Colbert had seen how in Greece and ancient Rome, and in modern Rome, under his own countryman, the Constable Bourbon, a public calamity might disperse and ruin them for half a century, without some fixed and corporate body and abode. He never dreamt that, in the absence of the fostering patronage and employment of government, the Academy could do more than fulfil these negative objects. ”

“ I should like to know whether The Builder will assume the character of Loudon’s Magazine, or whether you intend it entirely for the working classes—if for the latter, shall you endeavour to bring before them the principles of what they are called upon to labour at, or shall you endeavour to give them a taste for those acquirements which at present are supposed to be possessed by those who direct them? ”

“ A magazine has always occurred to me as the best mode to bring the architecture of this country in its best form before the public, always acknowledging the name of the professional gentlemen employed in the erection illustrated; so much so, that I have often been tempted to suggest the idea to some of the London publishers, as there the erections are as a source inexhaustible.
“Though The Builder may be an instrument of much good, if correctness of plans and details are guaranteed, its fall will be as certain, if it should be a medium of ‘book-making,’ so often seen thrown before the public. ”

“ Wilkins in the professor’s chair of the Royal Academy, is labouring with all the generous energy for which he is distinguished, to lay the products of a well-stored mind before the students, so as to excite them to an emulation of the works and achievements of the great masters in Architecture who have gone before. We have had the pleasure of attending the course of lectures of this session, and were greatly rejoiced to find, from the numbers and character of the auditory, that the study of the art is being regarded with interest by many out of the pale of the profession. ”

“ True, the bounty of nature would go a long way in supplying to the cravings of art the leisure and opportunity for gratification. True, those pyramids are evidence of the direction of great means and great powers to an end which astounds more than it edifies us, but what were the bounties of Egypt’s irrigating water, what the greatness of their pyramids compared with that bounty which Providence has given us in the mineral and the out-growing mechanical characteristics of this favoured country, and the pyramids which we erect as if in emulation of Egyptian vanity and inutility? ”

“ Enthusiast is an architect; that is, he is so for this limning; for Enthusiast enters into most things, and is the life and soul of them. We cannot go into his parentage, to shew how he is allied to, or of the family of, the Geniuses; but really it is a difficult task this sketching that we have undertaken, and reminds us of one of George Cruikshank’s humours, under the head of “Ugly Customers;” not that we are so much out of love with our subject as with the task we have undertaken.
Do excuse us, good readers, for a while longer, and we will tell you a story about this same Enthusiast. ”

“ Emulation would encourage him to do as well or better, to carry the same excellence into minor employments, or, at all events, to understand sufficient to derive pleasure from the examination of many of the specimens left us. A vast deal might be written upon the mere handicraft—much more upon the principles—more still upon the art; and when the design is taken up, the field is too spacious to put bounds to. ”

“ Education is too frequently confounded with book-learning, and that is considered to be knowledge which is only the key to it. Take your educated man, as he is called, and put him into the workshop or the sphere of operation in that art on which he descants so learnedly, and he must give way (at first at least) to the unlettered, or, as he is termed, the uneducated artificer and labourer. A mind well stored with the facts that bear upon any particular art, may be likened to a well-furnished chest of tools ”

“ A large and beautiful field lies open before you, and by bringing before the public some of the noble metropolitan structures, the beautiful street architecture, and suburban villas, you will create a love for reading and study amongst a most important class, that will force The Builder on, till it has attained the ‘Corinthian order’ as a magazine, and the companion of every artizan. ”

“ Indeed, so much do they themselves blunder, and so much of guess-work is there in their opinions, that to give things their right names, judging from effects, we should call the friend an enemy, and the enemy a friend. The only conclusion we can come to is by canvassing the motives of each, to decide that the well-meaning and evil-doing are ranged on the one side, and the evil-meaning and well-doing on the other. ”

“ Is it nothing, good countrymen and esteemed fellow-craftsmen, that we have to boast of honours and achievements such as neither military daring, or statesmanlike craft or wisdom has ever attained, or can attain to. What are [18] all the doings of the science of war or government compared with the building up, on clear and well-defined principles, abstract as well as tangible, those stupendous and imperishable memorials of a country’s history which the works of the Architect and the Building Artificer supply. ”

“ Judging from a perusal of The Builder that it is your intention to give to the building world the first information upon all matters connected with its interests, I beg therefore to apprize you that at this moment, a bill is preparing very secretly (at least the ground-work for one) for Parliament, upon which it is presumed, as secretly will be obtained, a New Building Act. ”

“ Begin and continue on the broad principle of practical utility, making most prominent, works already executed, or in the course of erection, with a copious description, as also, plans, elevations, sections, and details of the most prominent features of the building or structure, illustrated, and the work, from its great utility, will take a place amongst the magazines of the present day, second only to the great magazine of the north. ”

“ The Enthusiast must be the subject of many sittings, though we may give a complete feature or, sketch at each of his aspect for the day; and in doing so, we promise ourselves what we hope will be largely shared in by our readers, a fair amount of interest and gratification.
Enthusiast has some eccentricities, or to speak more plainly, has his oddities. Tell him so however, tell him as a friend, and he is enthusiastic to rid himself of his oddities. He has friends who now and then tell him so; he has enemies who also take the same liberty ”

“ Not only setting up houses or edifices, but, as we have said before, preparing the materials—aye, even to the very question of the planting and the culture of the oak and the pine, on which the future carpenter is to exercise his ingenuity. As to the brick-field, the quarry, the limekiln, the mine, the forest—consider what enters into the composition and completion of a building, what machines and implements are employed in working and preparing the materials, and its erection—what in the furnishing and fittings—what in the garden and other appurtenances. ”

“ The readers of The Builder will be pleased to observe, that although it appears in the form of a Magazine, our own mind is not made up or reconciled to its continuing in that character, or at any rate in that character alone. We shall look forward with some anxiety to the period when we should be enabled to make it a complete Weekly Journal, and this cannot be done without comprehending news; neither do we think it economy that it should be otherwise—economy of time and economy of means are involved in it, particularly with the workman. ”

“ Here’s a martyr!”
“Money, John,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “is the root of all evil. I grieve to see that it is already bearing evil fruit in you. But I will not remember its existence. I will not even remember the conduct of that misguided person”—and here, although he spoke like one at peace with all the world, he used an emphasis that plainly said ‘I have my eye upon the rascal now’—“that misguided person who has brought you here to-night, seeking to disturb (it is a happiness to say in vain) the heart’s repose and peace of one who would have shed his dearest blood to serve him.” ”

“ My answer to your question, as to whether a magazine or simple newspaper would be the better form of publication is this,—that though many would prefer it as a magazine only, yet many more would rather see the news of the week blended in its columns. I am no artist, I am no mechanic, but I am a very great admirer of architecture, particularly of country houses and rustic cottages, churches, gardens, &c. ”

“ I wish your new work was called ‘The Builder and Landscape Gardener.’ Views of parks and garden grounds, &c., ornamented with their castles, halls, cottages, &c., both of this and other countries, are at all times highly instructive and interesting.
“To the greatest talent is united in your work that kindly feeling towards those who have to labour for their daily food that will carry you on triumphantly. ”